Our hero Jyn Erso is caught trying to steal a rebel fighter and is taken into custody. When her background is revealed she’s given the choice of going on a mission to the planet to see what kind of weapons are being tested or being turned over to bounty hunters to be turned into the Empire for the substantial price on her head.

Saw Gerrera

Along with his sister, Steela, he fought alongside Darth Vader — back when the Sith lord was just an impetuous young Jedi named Anakin Skywalker. In the episode A War on Two Fronts, which aired in October 2012, Saw and Steela were part of an insurgent group being unofficially trained by Anakin, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and the padawan Ahsoka Tano.

As always, the excellent folks at MakingStarWars got good set intel… the production crew nicknamed him “Castro” probably in reference to Che Gueverra, from where “Saw Gerrera” may have come from

Why is his appearance different? Our guess is the trailer was a flashback, when a young rebellious Jyn may have bumped into him (If you keep fighting, what will you become?) Later on we see the older, slightly unhinged Gerrera… who’s fighting his own war independent of the Rebellion.

Director Orson Krennic

On the opposing side, this villain is an ambitious Imperial apparatchik who intends to use his squad of Deathtroopers to pulverize the Rebel uprising and ascend into the Emperor’s graces – while hopefully avoiding the wrath of his enforcer, Darth Vader.

The Rogue One Visual Story guide leak was right… the only thing it lacked was Krennic’s first name. At this point however, it’s still not clear exactly what he is Director of. The title is commonly used for government institutions (like the FBI and CIA), and not the military.

It also quashes any EU wishes of him being an analogue of Grand Admiral Thrawn, though he may have the same tactical brilliance.

Galen Erso

Jyn’s estranged father is like the galactic version of nuclear pioneer J. Robert Oppenheimer, with doomsday knowledge that is sought by both the Empire and the Rebellion. “He’s one of those people that has insight into you know specific aspects of just how the universe works,” says Hart. Where has Galen been, if Jyn has been on her own for years? “The circumstances of how the family got to the state that it’s in is something that we probably don’t want to share right now,”

Doomsday knowledge is clearly a reference to the Death Star. This reinforces the rumors that Mad Mikkelsen is a weapons designer who refined the original Geonosian blueprint and made the Death Star possible.

It’s also funny how Mikkelsen outed his character when he signed that “Galen” autograph way back in September 2015.

Out of all the major characters revealed in EW, only Galen didn’t have a photo. It’s possible his appearance may be disheveled and deranged after many years in Imperial custody. He could also be the hooded figure in the trailer.

Chirrut and Baze

Not to be cynical assholes, but our two Asian characters don’t just represent galactic diversity — they’re a shrewd move on Disney’s part to make the Star Wars brand a cultural phenomenon in China, where it’s much less known compared to the rest of the world.

Update: 24 hours after the promised deadline for proof elapsed, the Reddit thread was marked “Debunked”. See update at the end.

A few hours ago, a Redditor calling himself KeepR1Dark claimed to be involved in making Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. If you can’t tell from the username, he seems to have an axe to grind with the reshoots and the new direction the movie is going.

Interestingly, KeepR1Dark has offered to prove his credentials to the Reddit moderators. While we await their verdict, let’s hear the juicy (possible) intel that KRD has to offer.

As always, these leaks are not 100% confirmed. Read at your own risk!

The plot

The Rebel Alliance has caught wind of a weapons test on a planet in the outer rim. Our hero Jyn Erso is caught trying to steal a rebel fighter and is taken into custody. When her background is revealed she’s given the choice of going on a mission to the planet to see what kind of weapons are being tested or being turned over to bounty hunters to be turned into the Empire for the substantial price on her head.

Unbeknownst to the other characters Jyn has received a transmission from a man claiming to be her father and telling her that the fate of the entire galaxy rests on whether or not she can find him.

The Rebels go on their mission and discover the Empire testing Imperial walkers and order an attack on the prototypes, but the Walkers are fully operational and now down the Rebel attack squad. Jyn escapes during the battle and resumes the search for her father and his mysterious warning.

The Death Star

… the Rebels are totally unaware of the Death Star’s existence. The weapons test they are concerned with is for Imperial Walkers. They only discover the Death Star because Jyn goes rogue and is determined to find her father.

Mad Mikkelsen’s character

Jyn Erso’s father is alive but as a designer of the Death Star is on death row so as not to spill it’s secrets.

He’s had a change of heart at some point and has left the Death Star with a very small vulnerability, but a vulnerability nonetheless. He’s contacted his daughter to come and get the details of the vulnerability from him into the hands of the Rebel Alliance and chose his daughter specifically so he can apologize before his death for being an absentee father.

About Jyn

She remains loyal only to the idea of finding her father. She doesn’t care about the battle between the Empire and the Rebellion, she just wants to find her father. It is that love which uncovers the Death Star. The Rebellion would have been screwed if Jyn didn’t go rogue.

About the bacta tank scene

KRD claims it’s NOT a bacta tank, but a power core:

It’s not a tank. It’s a power core (for) the Death Star. The man kneeling in front of it is Jyn’s father having a “What have I done?” moment. The scene we are talking about is right before his arrest.

More on the aliens and the robot:

One is comic relief, one’s a serious ass kicker, and one is killed off much sooner than you’ll be expecting.

Do we see Vader?

Ohhhh yeah. In a night scene Vader absolutely lays waste to a Rebel ground Squad. Unfortunately this is one of the scenes we have to water down. We made it like something from the old slasher/horror films. Rebel soldiers who joked about a boogie man with magical powers and then minutes later are absolutely wasted.

Other OT characters

Just Vader and Leia and Tarkin and Mothma.

Cameos

Yes there’s a huge A lister who has one line but I don’t want to spoil it because we’re keeping that and it’s such an awesome “what the hell” moment.

Battle scenes

One big ground battle, 4 skirmishes, no space battles but there is a space pursuit of sorts.

On the original ending:

What we’ve created is not so far from the inspiration of the original films in that we styled it after WWII combat. The difference is that the original trilogy only used that inspiration for air fights. We invoke that same feeling in infantry scenes. There’s a beachhead scene that’s very much derivative of Saving Private Ryan, but in the Star Wars universe. Imagine the Stormtroopers are Rebel soldiers and as soon as those ramps come down and they run off the transports they’re mowed down by enemy fire. That’s what we’ve made here.

I’ll put it this way: a lot of characters die in this movie right now, and that was supposed to be the whole point. You don’t name an entire squadron after a group that got a happy ending, no that’s normally in honor of a great sacrifice.

The ending will stay the same, but the crew’s fate will be implied, not shown. The reshoot a will be for our Normandy inspired beachhead scene and the Vader massacre, as well as a few other combat scenes.

(Disney) wants a movie that kids can watch too because that will net the most money. (Director) Gareth is livid.

What happens in the last 10 minutes?

MAJOR MAJOR SPOILERS: Jyn Erso and crew beaming the plans aboard the Tantive IV before their ship is destroyed by an Imperial caravan.

The Alliance gets knocked around the whole film until the end. Remember when ANH starts the Rebels had just scored their first victory. (The sole victory is) literally at the very end of the movie.

Yesterday, Disney announced the Rogue One leak was “unauthorized and filled with incorrect information.” While we wonder what kind of leaks are actually “authorized”, our Rebel spies worked around the clock to find the “incorrect information” in the leak.

Today, we found one of the incorrect info Easter eggs: the name of that security droid is NOT K-250.

Let’s examine the leak again:

The droid spread is pretty straightforward, right? The big bold letters announce his name as K-250. This is why the entire Internet, from major sites like Wikipedia, IMDB, Yahoo News, to dedicated fan sites like Making Star Wars, Wookieepedia, Slashfilm, and Screenrant, are all calling him K-250 (K-two fifty).

However, look closer — his name is actually K-2SO (K-two ess oh).

But which is which, K-250 or K-2SO? We believe it’s the latter, K-two ess oh.

When it comes to accuracy, the text content of the leak isn’t trustworthy. Content is repeated for the villains page, and even copy-pasted from the Star Wars databank for the AT-AT page. This is because they are merely filler text, used to plot the layout.

Keeping that in mind, take a closer look at the title — it actually contradicts itself. The header says “K-two five ZERO” (number). Then the smaller header below it says “K-two five OH” (letter). It might be because it’s filler text hastily typed in. On the other hand, that diagram took a lot of time and couldn’t be the result of an accident.

Schematic-wise, the “S” in K-2SO couldn’t be a stylized version of “five”. If you notice, it looks exactly the same as the letter S in “Classified” just above it.

The big K-2SO also couldn’t be a stylized “five”. Notice how the number 2 has a straight edge. If the letter S was intended to be number 5, it should have a straight edge as well. And again, this was thoughtfully drawn out, not hastily typed in like the filler title.

K-2SO follows Star War’s naming tradition of letter-number-letter-letter. Take a look at C-3PO. He belongs to the 3PO series of protocol droids. Guess what rhymes with him? K-2SO. A 2SO series not only follows the naming convention, perhaps K-2S0 was also built by the same company that made Threepio’s family of droids (Cybot Galactica).

In addition, one of the Rebellion’s protocol droids in Hoth during The Empire Strikes Back was named K-3PO. So the choice of K-2SO may be a nice throwback by the Rogue One team.

Han Solo used to call him “that big white rod”.

If you search Google for K-2SO, only our site calls him as such. Everyone else thinks it’s K-250. You heard it here first!

So the next time you see another site proclaiming K-250, tell them K-2SO is an enforcer droid, not a Keurig coffee maker.

Representatives from Disney and Lucasfilm have contacted several websites asking them to take down the leak. According to the release:

“The Rogue One: A Star Wars Story information is the product of an unauthorized leak and a lot of the information listed isn’t even correct.”

Sites like Collider and Hitflix obliged and took down the content. Thankfully, Stormtrooper Larry hasn’t received any such notice thanks to our cloaking device (or maybe because we’re just a small-time blog).

Just to spite Disney, let’s examine their statement and repost the leaked photos one more time!

The product of an unauthorized leak

The Rogue One leak originated from Edelweiss, an online catalog for booksellers and publishers. Someone uploaded content from an upcoming book, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story: The Official Visual Story Guide, published by Media Lab Books and set for release in January 2017. It was included in the winter 2017 lineup of books by publishing house Macmillan.

The content was uploaded around 3 am EST yesterday. It was first picked up by the German fan site Jedi-Bibliotek. The intrepid Bothan spynet of Stormtrooper Larry followed a couple of hours later.

Less than 24 hours later, the Edelweiss book listing had been scrubbed clean like Alderaan. It’s like the leak never existed.

2. Incorrect information

Disney says “a lot of the information listed isn’t even correct”. Does this mean Director Krennic and the TIE Striker are false?

Most likely no.

We believe the core content such as character names and ships are correct. Disney execs are likely pertaining to the filler text used in the book. If you notice, the same description is repeated in some of the pages.

It could also be that the images themselves aren’t final. For one, the protagonists spread looks unpolished. The characters of Chirrut, Pao and Bistan look need some work.

Donnie Yen’s head looks out of proportion to his body, don’t you think?

Bodhi the rebel footsoldier looks more like cuddly Ewok than seasoned warrior. And then we have a Nickelodeon character on the right.

Then there’s also the appearance of T-70 X-wing fighters, which are TFA era. They could be placeholders for the older T-65s used by the Rebellion.

3. The ships

The U-wing looks like a mishmash of the snowspeeder with a couple of blades and X-wing engines.

The engine placement looks slapdash and might not be final yet.

Notice how the U-wing doesn’t appear in the book cover.

While it appears in the heroes spread, it looks out of place compared to the X-wings and Y-wings because of its different hue. It might have been added in as a placeholder for the actual ship.

The TIE Striker diagram looks too plain, compared to the intricate line drawings of the U-wing and AT-ACT. It’s possible this was a rough sketch, with the finished version to follow later.

4. The big picture

While we see new names and hardware, notice how the leak offered nothing in the way of the plot or movie spoilers. If it weren’t for the source, it could’ve been a generic press release, showing cool new characters while offering nothing substantive about the story.

Our guess is, the Rogue One leak was an oversight by a member of Lucasfilm’s marketing or merchandising group. It clearly wasn’t meant to be revealed given its unfinished nature and “Not Final” disclaimers. Disney’s plan was to throw more Rogue One nuggets during Star Wars Celebration Europe in July 15, but the leak pre-empted that.

We can only hope that no one lost their jobs at LFL over the leak.

“Disney is not as forgiving as I am.”

UPDATE: We discovered one of Disney’s “incorrect info” Easter eggs. Al the major news outlets and sites are reporting the droid’s name as K-250… when it’s actually not!

Stormtrooper Larry is happy to change that today with this massive data dump — the Death Star battle plans full intel on Rogue One!

The intel comes from Edelweiss, a digital catalog used by booksellers and publishers. Someone, (an intrepid Bothan spy), uploaded the scanned content from an upcoming coffeetable book called Rogue One: The Official Visual Story Guide.

Not only does it include the full names of Jyn Erso’s rogue crew, it gives us the name of Ben Mendelssohn’s cloak-clad villain, as well as info on the Death Troopers, two new starfighters, and the predecessor of the AT-ACT.

For what it’s worth, the scans are marked not final. So proceed at your own risk. And as always, SPOILERS AHEAD!

The rogue band of resistance fighters

Jyn Erso

Rebel Alliance Captain Cassian Andor

Rebel footsoldier Bodhi

Freelance assassin Baze

The “spiritual warrior” Chirrut

The aliens Pao and Bistan

K-2S0, an Enforcer droid designed by the Empire but now under Rebel service

2. Their Imperial foes

Ben Mendelssohn’s fancy-cloaked character is named Director Krennic

The black-clad troopers are confirmed to be Death Troopers, not Shadow Troopers

Notice how the text repeats itself, possibly as filler for the actual content to follow

3. Two new starfighters

The U-Wing is a four-engined Rebel Alliance ship equipped with two laser cannons and two forward-facing S-foils that give it its name

The TIE Striker sports high-speed wings that enable it to reach speeds of 1,500kph (the normal TIE fighter has a maximum atmospheric speed of 1,200kph according to Wookieepedia).

4. The AT-AT’s predecessor

We noticed how the AT-ATs in the trailer differed from their ESB cousins. Pablo Hidalgo confirmed that they are “not technically AT-ATs”. That’s because they are AT-ACTs! Could they be All-Terrain Armored Combat Transports?

While we don’t have photos, the text also confirms the existence of AT-DPs (All Terrain Defence Pods), which are two-legged, two-man platforms used for patrol and scouting missions.

5. The new droid

Look sir, droid! K-2S0 is a former Security Droid. He has the same “donut and two bars” back design as regular stormtroopers, but seems to have been reprogrammed by the Rebels. He will likely play a key role in infiltrating the Imperial base and letting our heroes in.

6. More glorious spreads

Just for the heck of it, here are some more gorgeous photos that don’t tell us much. Although we do wonder what the T-70 X-wing from The Force Awakens is doing here.

That new Hasbro playset Imperial hovertank from the trailer

The big mamajama itself, the Death Star

And finally, a group photo of the whole shebang.

The source itself, Rogue One: The Official Visual Story Guide, will be released on Jan. 24, 2017. This is why the leak is full of filler text and “Not Final” disclaimers. The final book will be 164 pages long and cost around $25.

Enjoy your Rogue One leak bonanza! Disney has promised we’ll hear more during Star Wars Celebration Europe in July, but for now it seems our Bothan spies have pre-empted the Disney Empire!